As technology progresses, telecommunications customers demand an increasing variety of features that are personalized in their functions, and can be used wherever the customer happens to be. Cellphones are popular because they provide one kind of personal mobility called “device” or “network-based” mobility, since the physical device may change locations without changing its network address. Cellphones, however, have many limitations with respect to voice quality, battery life, geography, and user interfaces. Also due to issues such as billing, customers cannot always use the same device for both work and personal needs.
Telecommunications software, however, is notoriously difficult to develop and upgrade. Its complex, distributed, and real-time features each have many interactions, some of which can result in unpredictable device interaction on a telecommunications network. This is further complicated by the telecommunications devices themselves having a wide variety of signaling capabilities and functionality.
Contrary to early predictions, these problems are present even in voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) environments. Currently, vendors of VoIP equipment are struggling to support the common dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) signaling of Public Switched Telephone Networks (PSTNs) with which they may interact. At the same time, it is even more difficult for them to augment existing devices to accommodate new personal mobility features.
Accordingly, there is a need for accommodating enhanced personal mobility functions in VoIP and other telecommunications environments in which feature interaction, feature expansion and device augmentation are readily accommodated.